Risking U.S. default a dangerous game

Here we go again. House Speaker John Boehner is promising a "whale of a fight" during the next several weeks over raising the government's borrowing limit.

Boehner and his fellow Republicans are vowing to hold the debt ceiling hostage unless President Obama and congressional Democrats agree to cut spending or defund ObamaCare.

As was the case during the last debt-ceiling debacle, in 2011, playing politics with the nation's creditworthiness is irresponsible and unnecessary.

Leave aside the ObamaCare obsession, because Republicans have zero chance of persuading the president to kill one of his defining achievements. After defeats in Congress, the Supreme Court and last year's presidential election, the ObamaCare opponents seem like the holdout Japanese soldiers who kept fighting World War II into the 1970s. Cooler heads in the party, including the speaker, know this.

Boehner and the GOP have a much better argument about the need to get long-term deficits under control, particularly by reining in the big benefit programs. But if the speaker wants to bite into that politically poisonous apple, he could start by taking advantage of Obama's proposals earlier this year to curb Social Security and Medicare - offers that infuriated liberal Democrats and might have led to serious negotiations. Instead, Boehner rejected the overtures because Obama wanted a balanced package that would also include some revenue increases.

Boehner has been around long enough to know that Republicans are playing a weak hand, something his Tea Party followers don't seem to grasp. He lived through the 1995-96 government shutdown, which was blamed on the GOP, and wants no repeat. So he's wisely trying to stave off a shutdown when funding runs out at the end of this month by proposing a short-term spending bill to keep the lights on.

But trading a government shutdown for the risk of defaulting on the national debt is a dangerous game. Even the hint that the United States couldn't meet its obligations rattles the financial markets and threatens the nation's credit rating. That would drive up interest rates, drive down stock markets and weaken the economic recovery.

The U.S. actually hit its $16.7 trillion borrowing ceiling in May, but Treasury Secretary Jack Lew has been maneuvering to delay the "X date" when the government can't pay all its bills. He said last week that the X date will now fall sometime in mid-October. Congressional action is imperative, and with the Syria resolution taking center stage when lawmakers return next week, the time for dealmaking is growing short.

Boehner says he won't give up his hostage unless there's a budget deal that saves more than the debt limit would have to be raised. He admits the fight will be messy but says there's no alternative. "If this were easy to do, somebody over the last 20 or 30 years would have gotten it done," he says.

News flash: Somebody has done it. Twice. In 1990, Republican President George H.W. Bush brokered a big deficit-reduction deal that cut spending and raised taxes. Then, in 1993, President Bill Clinton pushed through a similar package. These agreements helped pave the way for the only balanced budgets - 1998 through 2001 - in the past 40 years. And they didn't require risking the nation's creditworthiness.